


Unfinished RAGE!Fic

by xsaturated



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsaturated/pseuds/xsaturated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spite!Written for the prompt: Kurt meets Blaine's older brother and bam! They are instantly attracted to each other. Blaine at first is super happy that his boyfriend and brother get along but then starts to see the chemistry between them and is afraid and jealous. In the end Kurt breaks up with Blaine in order to start a relationship with older!Anderson and they move to NY together, end up getting married, happy couple etc... Blaine and his brother never reconcile and Blaine never really recovers. No Seblaine though.</p><p>YOU SAID YOU DIDN'T WANT SEBLAINE SO I GAVE YOU SOME SEBLAINE. XOXO ENJOY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished RAGE!Fic

**Author's Note:**

> Unfinished. Unformatted. Unedited. DEFINITELY NOT KURT FRIENDLY. Run for your lives etc etc

\--

The first time that Blaine falls in love, he is sixteen years old and to him it feels like it could last a lifetime. Since they first met Kurt has become his best friend, his confidante and the person Blaine trusts more than anyone else on the face of the planet. For several excruciating months of his life he’ll look back on the day that they met and he will think that the worst mistake he ever made was to turn around when a boy stopped him on a staircase and said, excuse me. Blaine always has been far too polite for his own good.

\--

There are signs, of course, before it all happens. Kurt tells him once that bisexuality is something gay guys use to make themselves feel normal in high school. Blaine talks to Cooper more than usual that week, making excuses to call him on lunchbreaks or after school and between Cooper’s auditions. They don’t really talk on the phone that often, but it’s easier to pretend he is okay over the phone with Cooper than it is to deal with the open curiosity on the Warblers faces as he avoids Kurt all week.

Blaine’s never been very good at holding his ground or speaking up for himself when it puts him at odds with the people he cares about; but there is a part of him that stubbornly clings to the feeling of betrayal that seeps through him at Kurt’s reaction. In that respect at least his brother has always been his polar opposite. When Cooper finally wheedles the reasons behind Blaine’s frequent calls out of him, he tells him he should never let anyone make him feel like his feelings aren’t valid, even if they claim to be a friend.

In hindsight, the irony of it all still kind of astounds him.

But at sixteen years old Kurt Hummel is still the first person in Blaine’s life since he came out that he has really felt understands him. He is the first true friend Blaine can say he’s ever had, the only person that he has ever considered talking to about what happened at his old school because he is the first person he has ever felt would get it. So he takes that tiny, nervous part of him that has been wondering since the party and he buries it.

Because Kurt understands what it is to be torn down and hurt in a way that his perpetually popular, handsome older brother never will and Blaine can’t risk losing that.  
Some things, Blaine will think at the time, are more important than the niggling question in the back of his head when Rachel kisses him in the middle of the Lima Bean.

It’s the first time that he backs down.

(It isn’t the last.)

\--

When he and Kurt finally do get together, Cooper laughs down the phone line at him during his (supposedly) fortnightly calls and says, “Finally, baby brother.”

A part of Blaine is kind of surprised that he even remembers who Kurt is. Cooper has a notoriously short attention span for the details of Blaine’s life, but he takes it as a sign that maybe his brother hasn’t entirely forgotten him with the glare of the bright lights of Hollywood to steal his attention.

It’s why it is Cooper who Blaine first nervously confesses that he wants to give public school another try to, a desire that has been fed fat on Kurt’s entirely unsubtle suggestions over the course of the summer. His father is unimpressed by his transparent reasoning and his mother insists that she’s worried about his future, his grades, everything except the one thing they all have lurking in the back of their minds, but come the start of the school year the transfer papers have both signatures.

His father tells Blaine that he’s made his own bed, as he hands them over with a grim expression on his face, and that he can’t expect them to bail him out this time when it all goes to hell.

\--

McKinley is really nothing like Blaine had expected.

In his campaign to get Blaine to transfer, Kurt had talked at length about how the New Directions are a family and that, however bad the rest of the school may be, the glee club will always look out for each other. And, to be fair, it is clear to him from his very first day that it is actually the case.

What is also clear to him right from the start is that Blaine is not, and likely never will be, a part of that family.

At least, not if Finn has anything to say about it.

\--

Play auditions are still a fresh wound between them and the tension still lingers, fuelled by Kurt’s frustration with the limitations of Officer Krupke. Blaine has heard him start to complain almost ten times inside of his hearing, muttering about how he will never get into NYADA on the back of a bit part like that - but it always quickly tapers off, bitten off into silence.

Outside of rehearsals Kurt is so preoccupied with padding his college applications and the Class Elections, that it sometimes feels like they are the only things that matter to him. Blaine throws himself into play rehearsals, into becoming the Tony that Rachel’s Maria deserves, into trying to get the New Directions to accept him as part of the team. It gets to the point that sometimes an entire day at school can go by with them only speaking a few words in passing to each other.

He meets Sebastian Smythe almost a year to the day that he first laid eyes on Kurt, but that’s about where the similarities end.

Sebastian is the kind of guy who is used to getting what he wants and he is painfully honest about exactly what he wants from Blaine. He is the most blatant, unsubtle flirt that Blaine thinks he will ever meet in his lifetime and Kurt loathes him. Blaine honestly can’t blame him.

Sebastian is persistent though. He has a certain kind of insidious charm that gets beneath the skin and his attention is shamefully, secretly, pleasant in the face of the indifference and outright hostility he often faces from the New Directions. Blaine misses Dalton more than he ever could have imagined when he was convincing his parents to sign those transfer papers.

When Sebastian is around, Kurt sits up and pays attention. It’s like he suddenly remembers that Blaine is there, when only moments earlier he hadn’t seemed to hear a word that Blaine said.

When Sebastian is around, Blaine feels like maybe he matters again.

\--

For the first two weeks, after it all happens, Blaine tells himself that he must deserve it.

Because one time he got drunk and danced with Sebastian in a bar and made an even stupider mistake in that empty parking lot. Because there was a part of him that liked how Sebastian made him feel with his stupid, sleazy come-ons. Because he lost his composure and his temper in one foul swoop and said awful things to someone who didn’t deserve it. Because he is just so tired of nobody ever seeming to hear him when he speaks. Because he’s never been able to entirely silence that question, whispering in his head, whenever he catches Rachel looking at him from the corner of his eye.

Because he is Blaine Anderson and all he ever seems to do is disappoint the people he cares about.

For the first two weeks he thinks that he must have done something truly terrible to deserve this.

Because there has to be a reason.

\--

In the end, it really is Sebastian that signals the beginning of the end for them, but not in any of the ways he’d actually intended.

Blaine is just stupid enough to put himself in the way of a slushie intended for Kurt, to end up screaming in a pile of sticky, blood red ice while the Warblers turn their backs on him. He is just unlucky enough to need surgery and Cooper cares just enough (or his parents insist hard enough, Blaine is starting to suspect) that he needs to come home to assure himself that his little brother is going to be okay.

He thinks it’s nice, at first, that Kurt seems to like Cooper so much. The medication they’ve got him on makes him too drowsy to be much of a conversationalist and it’s a relief to not have to worry about playing the middle-man between his brother and his boyfriend.

He drifts on the sound of their laughter, in and out, and half-imagines conversations that sound like, We can’t, not here, not-

In retrospect, he probably should have seen it coming.

Cooper has always been everyones favourite. He is charming and popular and his acting career is finally starting to take off too, to hear him talk about it, and Blaine - well, he has never quite managed to live up to his image.

In the end when it all comes out, when they sit him down and (come clean) - confirm everything that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach has been telling him since he was cognizant enough to notice the way Kurt looks at his brother, like doing it together might somehow make it okay that he is sitting there in his pajamas with his eye wrapped in gauze from a surgery that has left him on the constant edge of pain, listening to his boyfriend tell him he is in love with his brother.

Somewhere, beneath the dizzying sensation of disbelief and betrayal all he can ask is what he did to deserve this.

Because it must have been awful.

They don’t seem to have an answer. They fumble around and say that they hope he understands. That it’s not like they wanted to hurt him but they can’t keep pretending either. That they respect him too much to keep it a secret any longer. Sometimes you just can’t help the way you feel.

Blaine tells them that he can’t help but feel that they should go fuck themselves.

He takes his painkillers and shuts his door and after that he doesn’t feel much of anything at all.

\--

McKinley is too small of a school for him to be able to completely avoid Kurt, and Cooper’s presence at home is so common now that Blaine sometimes thinks he may as well just move back in.

He lasts a full week of the staring and the whispering at school, of not daring to go to Glee practice and dodging members of the club in the halls because he doesn’t know who, if any of them, will be on his side or even care. He doesn’t know which would hurt more, so he doesn’t ask them. That is it - a full week of hiding in the library at lunchtime and shutting himself in his room the moment he gets home.

He lasts exactly one week at McKinley before he goes to his father and begs him to let him go back to Dalton, to another public school, anywhere else.

His parents have been tight-lipped about the entire situation so far, though it is clear they know what has happened. There is a part of him that is certain his father won’t let him transfer schools again, not in the middle of the school year. Not for something so trivial as a messy break-up. It is the same part of him that thinks this is probably the perfect opportunity for one of his father’s well-worn speeches about accountability and taking responsibility for his choices.

Blaine almost doesn’t know what to think when his father stops him halfway through his carefully rehearsed speech that is quickly degenerating into something embarrassingly desperate, reaches into his desk drawer and hands a familiar set of papers to him.

He stares numbly at the signature and the blank space where the date should be, still waiting to be filled, and he knows that this is his father making a point. That this is his way of saying that he has had them sitting in his desk since the day he signed the papers for McKinley.

He waits for it to come, the conditions or the I told you so or whatever it is that’s waiting on his father’s tongue, but when Blaine lifts his chin and forces himself to meet his father’s eyes he doesn’t see what he expects. His father has a pen clutched between his fingers and he gestures to Blaine to hand the papers back to him.

Blaine can hear the pen scratch across the paper but he can’t bring himself to look away from the strangely solemn expression on his father’s face, the way that his lips press firmly together in a thin troubled line before he says, “We’ll have to get you fitted for a new uniform. You’ve lost weight recently.”

He doesn’t really know what to say but he hopes the quiet, “Thank you,” will be enough.

\--

The next time he walks into McKinley will also be his last.

He empties his locker into a cardboard box, judiciously trashing anything that makes the constant lump in his throat throb painfully, and keeping what he thinks he might be able to salvage of his time here. There’s a cast photo from West Side Story, some behind the scenes snapshots of him and Mike in full costume, one of him and

Rachel after the final curtain call.

These are the memories that are worth holding onto, he assures himself as he neatly slides them into the box next to textbooks and folders and the loose stationary that keeps rolling around in the bottom of the carton. There are photos from after their Sectionals win and Blaine wonders how that victory that had seemed so significant once, that had given him such hope that he would be accepted as part of the team, could seem so hollow now.

He keeps one, where they’re all tangled together and beaming at the camera.

The rest go tumbling into the trash, a glossy, tumbling kaleidoscope of Kurt’s smiling face that stares up at him from the lining of the trashcan before he walks away.

The halls have filled again while he worked and as he walks he catches a glimpse of Kurt’s profile through the crowd. His chest clenches at the sight and he drags his eyes away to watch as Rachel tucks her hair behind her ear. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, but he certainly has no plans to come back if he can help it and the prospect of not seeing her again is so hard to fathom. And she may be Kurt’s friend, first and foremost, but he will never forget that she had always tried to make him feel welcome.

The moment she catches sight of him it’s like she knows, words dying on her tongue as her eyes stick to the box he has tucked under his arm. Kurt’s neck cranes to follow her line of sight but Blaine forces himself not to look.

Kurt doesn’t get to have an opinion on this.

He’s a few feet away when she closes the gap herself, brushing past Kurt to grab at his arm and say, “What are you doing? You can’t just-”

“I just wanted to wish you luck for your NYADA audition,” he replies, cutting her off and fixing his best attempt at a smile onto his face in case she notices how much effort it takes to sound so bright. “In case I don’t see you before it happens. I know you’re going to kill it, but a little extra luck never hurt anyone.”

“You’re transferring back,” Kurt cuts in, the disbelief and damnation in his voice evident. “After everything the Warblers and Sebastian did you’re just running back there.”  
Blaine sucks in a sharp breath and focuses intently on Rachel who doesn’t seem to know who to look at. “I really enjoyed performing with you Rachel.”

“You really are just going to run away from your problems all over again, aren’t you?” Kurt huffs out, “This is ridiculous, Blaine. Just because we broke up doesn’t mean-”

“We didn’t break up,” he snaps before he can control it, before he can stop the simmering anger that’s begun to feel like something has taken up permanent residence inside of him from boiling over entirely. “You messed around with my brother while I was recovering from surgery that I had to get because of you.”

He takes a breath and has to look away because he can’t bring himself to look at Kurt’s face, to know that this boy who has hurt him so badly is the same boy who’d once told Blaine that he loved him. He’s starting to wonder if any of it was ever real.

“Blaine-”

She doesn’t seem to know what to say, but her fingers curl into his arm, squeezing once, and he expels his sudden rush of anger with a slow breath, closing a hand over hers briefly before he says, “Bye Rachel. I’ll email you the Summer casting calls for Six Flags when they come in.”

He readjusts his grip on the box under his arm and forces himself to walk away, ignoring the glimpse of Kurt’s stricken face he gets as he makes the trek to Ms. Pillsbury’s office.

There aren’t many things that he’ll miss about McKinley, but he thinks that Rachel might be one of them.

\--

Blaine’s first official class back at Dalton is Chemistry and he is pretty sure it has to be some kind of cosmic joke that it’s also the first of many classes on his schedule that will coincide with Sebastian’s.

Sebastian is slouching at a table by himself at the back of the classroom, his long limbs stretched out across the empty space in a manner that suggests his solitude is entirely of his own design. When Blaine walks into the room, five minutes late and feeling utterly conspicuous in his brand new uniform, his head cranes up slowly and that wide Cheshire smile crawls across his entire face with something like disbelief. Or possibly delight.

Blaine doesn’t really want to consider it too closely.

He does his best to ignore Sebastian’s intent stare as he talks with the teacher, glad that Mr. Gray at least seems content with just saying, “Good to have you back with us, Mr. Anderson,” and telling him to take a seat.

There are exactly two vacant spots in the entire classroom, both of which (and he sincerely doubts this is just a coincidence) are in Sebastian’s immediate vicinity. He hesitates at the start of the row, weighing his options in his head, because the prospect of having Sebastian sitting directly behind him for the rest of the school year is perhaps even worse than the prospect of sitting next to him.

Sebastian has already retracted his legs from their claim on the seat next to him and he’s watching Blaine with a broad, smug smile as he nudges the vacant seat in front of him with his toes (in what Blaine is pretty sure is meant to be a warning) and raises his eyebrows.

Blaine sighs and trudges down the row, dropping into the seat next to Sebastian with a muttered, “This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

Sebastian actually laughs at that, stifled behind a hand, and Blaine can already practically feel Sebastian’s stupidly long limbs encroaching into his space.

“Or that I’m even speaking to you,” Blaine adds sharply as he unpacks his satchel.

Sebastian smirks. “You seem awfully chatty so far.”

Blaine scowls in response (it only serves to make Sebastian’s smirk widen further) and quite pointedly doesn’t reply. Instead he settles for flipping open his textbook and ignoring Sebastian as he turns in his seat, props his chin up on one hand and watches him intently. The attention is a little bit horrifying and, if he’s being honest, a whole lot distracting.

He takes a deep breath and tries to focus on what their teacher is saying but Mr. Gray is busy explaining something from the text. A quick look confirms the page number isn’t to be found on the whiteboard and there’s an elbow quite effectively blocking his view of Sebastian’s textbook. Blaine suspects it’s intentional.

“Need some help?”

Blaine grits his teeth and determinedly ignores him, glancing across the aisle to the next table hopefully but looking away again in a hurry when he finds that they’re staring back at him with barely-concealed interest. He thinks it’s probably fitting that, just like every other good thing in his life lately, the place that had once been his sanctuary has now become just another source of humiliation.

And Sebastian’s still just watching him.

“Would you stop that?” he whispers, mindful of the carefully listening ears at the table next to them.

“What? I’m not allowed to enjoy the scenery?” Sebastian retorts immediately, not even bothering to lower his voice. “Because I have to say it’s improved substantially in the last few minutes.”

“You don’t get to do that.” Blaine presses his palms flat to the table in front of him to avoid the temptation of doing something supremely childish.

“Because it will hurt your precious boyfriend’s delicate feelings?” Sebastian replies, lower this time but loaded with amusement.

Blaine flinches at the mention of Kurt, finding that somehow knowledge of the disastrous end to his relationship has yet to spread to Dalton isn’t as comforting as he’d thought it would be.

Sebastian waits, soaking in every moment of hesitation with far too much interest, like he’s only moments away from figuring out why Blaine is here, so Blaine attempts to divert his attention, “You nearly blinded me, I almost lost my eye - you don’t get to pretend it never happened.”

Blaine’s almost certain he catches a flicker of uncertainty on Sebastian’s face before he schools his face and shrugs. “I apologized.”

“No you didn’t,” Blaine scoffs back.

“I sent flowers,” Sebastian says, a hint of a smirk returning to his face.

“Lime blossoms,” Blaine replies coldly. “Kurt threw them in the trash. I don’t even want to know how you got them at this time of year.”

“You’re blushing,” Sebastian points out with a grin. “You read the card first didn’t you.”

“No,” Blaine lies immediately. “And that does not count as an apology.”

“You’re cute when you’re angry,” Sebastian says, tilting his head curiously. “It’s like watching a puppy growl at it’s reflection.”

“You are an asshole,” Blaine snaps.

Sebastian smothers his laughter behind a hand, “Adorable.”

Blaine huffs and glares down at his textbook, trying to focus on the steady cadence of Mr. Gray’s voice instead of the persistent tap of one of Sebastian’s feet against the leg of his chair.

He lasts all of thirty seconds before Blaine turns his head to hiss, “Will you stop that?”

Sebastian just raises his eyebrows, before obligingly retracting his foot and instead reaching over to tug Blaine’s textbook to the midway point between them. Blaine opens his mouth to protest but Sebastian’s fingers are already busily flicking through the pages and Blaine half expects for him to pass it back to him on page 69 or something equally as juvenile, but instead the page he pauses at looks miraculously like the diagrams that Mr. Gray has been drawing onto the board for the past five minutes.

He also doesn’t give it back.

“Sebastian-,” he begins in protest but only receives an amused smile in response before Sebastian’s eyes drop to the text, like he’s actually going to pay attention to what Mr. Gray is saying.

And Blaine’s mostly just grateful that he isn’t staring anymore but when he actually picks up his pen to start taking notes, he hears the low hum of, “Adorable,” near his ear.

Clearly he should have picked the other seat.

\--

When the lesson ends Blaine makes a beeline for the door, hoping he’ll be able to lose Sebastian in the crowded halls, but he’s brought to a halt by Mr. Gray waving him over to his desk while the rest of the class file out of the classroom. He smiles broadly at Blaine who does his best to return it when he notices Sebastian leaning against the door frame from the corner of his eye, waiting for him.

“Glad to have you back, Mr. Anderson,” he declares. “I doubt it will take long for you to catch up, but if you need any extra help, I’m sure Mr. Smythe will be willing to lend a hand. He has quite the natural aptitude for the subject.”

Blaine doesn’t dare to so much as glance at Sebastian at that, but he thinks he hears the words, “Too easy,” muttered far too low for Mr. Gray to catch as he accepts the stack of hand-outs that his teacher has gathered for him and is sent on his way.

He’d kind of hoped to shake Sebastian on the way to his next class, but he falls into step next to Blaine, looking more pleased with himself than he has any right to.

“So,” Sebastian declares brightly, leaning in to peer over Blaine’s shoulder when he pulls out his class schedule to refresh his memory. “Did you actually tell anyone you were coming back or were you going for the element of surprise?”

“Neither,” Blaine replies. “What are you doing, Sebastian?”

“Walking you to class,” he replies easily. “We can’t have the famous Blaine Anderson getting lost on his first day back now, can we?”

Blaine rolls his eyes. “I think I can find my own way thanks.”

Sebastian shrugs, though the smirk on his face never quite leaves as he says, “I guess I’ll just walk you to my class then.”

Of course.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Sebastian continues, “But what exactly did you do to get yourself sent back here? Wild party? Fail a class?”

Blaine presses his lips firmly shut and wonders if Sebastian will give up if he just doesn’t answer.

Of course it doesn’t work. In fact, his silence only seems to increase Sebastian’s enthusiasm for the subject.

“No, no, that isn’t it. Oh, let me guess, did Daddy catch you and your sad little boyfriend in flagrante?”

Blaine’s shoulders stiffen and he busies himself with stuffing his schedule back into his pocket, looking pointedly away as he replies, “I asked to come back, actually.”

Blaine can practically hear Sebastian’s mind working overtime next to him as his eyebrows raise, green eyes wide with interest. And Sebastian is smart, is the thing. It’s one of the reasons that Blaine had never really been able to cut off contact, no matter how much Kurt may have wanted him to. Sebastian is clever and knows how to get Blaine talking, how to push his buttons.

 

It makes the pause in conversation all the more worrying, because he’s undoubtedly already crossing possibilities off the very short list of reasons of why Blaine would want to return to Dalton after everything that happened in that parking garage. Sebastian is smart and Blaine knows it won’t take him long.

Blaine hooks his thumb under the strap of his satchel and braces for the inevitable, but it doesn’t come.

Instead they walk in silence to their next class and while Blaine can all but feel Sebastian’s eyes whenever they glance towards him, calculating and clearly intrigued, it isn’t brought up again.

\--

And that’s the way it continues for the rest of the week.

Blaine waits for someone to bring it up, for Sebastian to press for details during the classes they share, or the whispers to start up around him, but aside from the curious looks he receives for it, his return to Dalton has gone remarkably smoothly.

It is both entirely changed and exactly the same as he remembers it.

The classes are intense, challenging, and he revels in them and the way they give him something to set his mind to. His classmates are pleasant, polite and distant; a tepid warmth of indifference that he both loathes and loves all at once.

Then there are the Warblers.

They appear at seemingly every turn, determinedly dragging him to sit with them at lunch or study or talk like if they work hard enough they can make him forget the way he felt, knowing they walked away from him while he was lying on the ground in that parking garage. They are so eager to welcome him back into the fold that he almost feels bad about the part of him that stubbornly refuses to forgive them.

Blaine doesn’t know what to think about the fact that Sebastian never joins in on these all too transparent schemes. He sees him, sometimes, sitting by himself or with people that Blaine assumes are from the lacrosse team and watching with a smirk as Nick or Trent intercepts him on his way through the dining hall.

In the wake of his time at McKinley, Dalton sometimes feels muted and soft. Quiet and safe and familiar and somehow astoundingly small, like he’s trying to force himself back into a cage he’s outgrown.

(Blaine doesn’t want to consider too closely why it is that he never feels any of those things when Sebastian is around.)

\--

“Can you pass the salad?”

Blaine doesn’t look up from his plate, focusing instead on dragging his fork absently across the mound of potato on his plate and wondering if it tastes better than it looks (his mother’s attempts to cook Western food are never particularly successful).

He hears the loud sigh from across the table, his father’s annoyed grunt and his mother’s tut of disapproval all in quick succession. A fair indication that, yes, the question had been directed at him and no, he wasn’t going to acknowledge it.

“Come on, Blaine, you can’t just ignore me forever,” Cooper insists as he leans across the table to snatch up the salad bowl from where it sits just inches from Blaine’s plate.

Blaine’s pretty sure he can try.

“What are you, five? Kurt said that you-”

“I have homework,” Blaine announces, cutting Cooper off mid-sentence as he stands and heads for the door.

He can hear his father saying something in a low, irritable voice and his mother sighing as he leaves the room. Hears Cooper’s chair scrape across the floor and the footsteps that follow in his wake, pausing at the beginning of the stairs to call, “Really, Blaine? You don’t think this has gone on long enough?”

And this is what Blaine doesn’t understand: why he is expected to roll over, obligated to forgive and forget when he is wronged. Why it never seems to matter when he gets hurt. Why the only one who ever has to face any consequences is him.

He realizes that he’s come to a pause halfway up the stairs, one hand curling slowly around the banister as he breathes steadily, in then out, and ignores the sound as Cooper slowly starts to climb the stairs behind him.

 

A part of him still can’t even comprehend it; that the people who have done these awful things that he can’t even bring himself to think about because it makes him crazy, aren’t some faceless looming shapes in the dark. Cooper is family: the big brother he had worshipped when he was growing up. And Kurt.

Well, he thought he’d known Kurt.

“You’re my brother,” Cooper says, stopping just two steps behind him and Blaine can see him reaching out a hand from the corner of his eye. “I’m worried about you. Kurt said that one of his friends saw you talking with that Sebastian kid-”

Blaine jerks away before the hand can reach his shoulder, his heart thumping wildly in his chest as something painful seizes his lungs. He wants to say, you have no right or how dare you or any one of the things that are suddenly racing through his mind.

Instead he lurches forward, forcing his feet to move, step after step, like the further away he can get the easier it will be to breathe, until he can choke out, “I don’t have a brother.”

Cooper scoffs and Blaine catches a glimpse of him shaking his head before he follows Blaine up the stairs, two at a time, and, if the expression on his face is any indication, clearly annoyed now. “We’re concerned, Blaine. Just because your feelings are hurt doesn’t mean you should be throwing yourself at the first person who-”

And Blaine’s never been good at sticking up for himself, not in the way that has always come so naturally to Cooper. Cooper confronts things, is always pushing to ensure his opinion is known. Blaine’s always buried his feelings until he simply can’t anymore, until they finally explode.

He’ll later take some grim satisfaction from the surprise on Cooper’s face when he whirls around, unable to stop himself from spitting, “Yeah and you’re just the perfect brother aren’t you, Cooper?”

“He almost blinded you, Blaine. I know you aren’t that stupid-”

Blaine forces himself to turn and walk away, “At least I know what to expect from him.”

“How can you compare what that guy did to you to this,” Cooper persists, clamping a hand down on his shoulder to stop him and Blaine shrugs him off.  
He can hear blood rushing in his ears, the buzz of disbelief ringing in his ears as he knocks Cooper’s hand away from him and snarls, “You’re right, it’s not even close. At least Sebastian wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

He makes it to his room before Cooper can come up with a response and slams the door shut behind him.

That, at least, seems to be enough of a hint that the conversation is over.

\--

“So,” Sebastian drops into the seat opposite him, nudging Blaine’s Chemistry textbook aside with his knuckles and a mild wrinkle of his nose before he smirks across the table at him. “Are you done making your little followers squirm, or are you going to keep delaying your inevitable triumphant return to the Warblers?”

Blaine rolls his eyes, drags the textbook back into the center of the table with one finger and pretends to be thoroughly engrossed in the explanation of whatever that equation is supposed to be for. He’s finding it kind of hard to concentrate with Sebastian watching and waiting, the table trembling with every persistent tap of his foot against the leg.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says when he realizes that pretending to be engrossed in his homework isn’t going to make Sebastian leave.

Sebastian snorts, leaning back a little in his chair and raising an eyebrow. “You’re very transparent, Blaine, but it’s cute so I’ll let it slide. But here’s the thing-”Sebastian leans in again, his voice dropping low enough that Blaine subconsciously mirrors Sebastian’s body language in order to hear him. “The Warblers want to win at Regionals. And, while the New Directions may officially be down one very exceptional male soloist, we still need to pull out all the stops to ensure our victory.”

Blaine huffs and sinks back in his chair.

“Don’t tell me that you don’t want to beat them,” Sebastian retorts easily. “I don’t know what Hummel did to piss you off so much, but it’s like my grandfather always told me, Killer; don’t be a sad bastard, get even.”

Blaine wrinkles his nose, “I’m pretty sure that’s not how the expression actually goes.”

Sebastian flashes a smile in response. “My grandfather wasn’t a big fan of tradition. And don’t change the subject. I mean, the only reason I’m trying to hurry this inevitability along is because we’d really like to nail down the setlist and work out the choreography for Regionals.”

“What makes you think I’m even interested in rejoining the Warblers?” Blaine replies sharply, unable to contain the flare of annoyance that is rising in his chest at the apparently forgone conclusion.

“Because you belong on a stage,” Sebastian replies bluntly. “Letting your talent go to waste when it could be of better use in putting Hummel in his place at Regionals and getting the Warblers to Nationals would be unforgivable. Do you really think anyone from the New Directions won’t be expecting to see you on that stage at Regionals?”

Blaine blinks back at him, his mouth drooping in a surprised oh.

“Now, are you in or not?”

Sebastian quirks an eyebrow, lips curling in one of those slow smiles that Blaine has never been able to meet head on and he ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck and unable to keep the smile that keeps trying to escape at bay.

“Fine,” he says, shaking his head. “Fine. I’m in.”

“Funny,” Sebastian’s smile turns to a smirk. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

\--

Blaine suspects that this all must be some elaborate scheme.

Sebastian takes far too much pleasure in shepherding him to Warbler practice after their shared Chemistry class on Wednesday afternoon and Blaine sincerely considers turning around and leaving when he finds himself offered up to his fellow Warblers like he’s the spoils of whatever war Sebastian is waging against the New Directions.

It’s clear from the smug, victorious smile and the surprise on the faces that surround them, quickly overtaken by grins and shoulder slaps and ‘finally’s, that Sebastian has safe-guarded Blaine’s acceptance for the sake of a grand reveal.

It has to be in aid of something, but Blaine hasn’t figured out what it is. Yet.

And, for all that Dalton sometimes seems so terribly unchanged, (stagnant, he thinks when the sameness of it all starts to chafe) the Warblers of now are nothing like he’d left them.

The moment that the commotion has died down, Sebastian takes charge.

Blaine watches, bemused by the sight of the Council made so utterly redundant, as they furiously debate song selection for Sectionals and it’s all so utterly foreign. He drifts on the sound of them debating a song by The Wanted, only half-listening until suddenly Sebastian is in his face, asking, “Are we boring you?”

It’s a challenge, Sebastian’s eyebrow quirked and his eyes hard. Blaine is surprised by how much he seems to care.

“Up tempo numbers are fun, but unless they’re unbelievable they won’t have the same impact as an emotional ballad, and I can guarantee that is what Rachel will bring to the table. They’re kind of her specialty,” Blaine says in lieu of an answer, surprised when Sebastian actually smiles.

“So you do want to win,” Sebastian retorts, crossing his arms and straightening his spine to draw himself up to his full height. “I was starting to think you were just going to sit in the corner and sigh mournfully every five minutes over how heartbroken you are.”

Blaine narrows his eyes, sitting up a little straighter in his seat and pushing away the sting of that remark as he retorts, “Funny. Because here I was, wondering if you would ever stop talking and actually do anything.”

There are a few titters from the others and Blaine can see Jeff hiding a smile behind his hand from the corner of his eye, but Sebastian’s eyebrows are both raised and he has a strange look on his face, somewhere between amused and challenging as he asks, “And what does Blaine Anderson suggest we do?”

He knows exactly what Sebastian is doing. The way the corner of his lip starts to curl when Blaine hesitates, how his shoulders start to rise in a shrug and his head starts to turn away, dismissive, and Blaine is so tired of being dismissed. Of not being heard.

So he stands, tugs off his blazer and tosses it over the arm of the chair, tugs at the knot of his tie to loosen it because he feels trapped and confined here now, but he will be damned if they won’t hear him.

He glances around at the old faces, the new ones he doesn’t recognize, the frustration and the anger that has been bubbling away inside of him for weeks now straining to make itself known. The Warblers that he remembers have never seen him sing anything deeper than that Hey Monday song he’d once convinced himself was an accurate portrayal of his feelings towards Kurt.

(In retrospect, the song makes more sense than he ever imagined it would.)

But these are not the Warblers that he used to know and Blaine isn’t the same person that he was then either. McKinley has forged him into something new, something he doesn’t quite know the shape of yet, but he’s getting there.

He rolls back the sleeves of his shirt, ignoring the bemused looks of his fellow Warblers and Sebastian’s intent stare until he feels centered and takes a step closer to the middle of the room. He has never been nervous about singing for the Warblers, but this feels different, somehow. Like he is baring a part of himself that he has kept hidden from them all.

He meets Sebastian’s eye, looks away, takes a steadying breath and sings.

When there’s nowhere else to run, is there room for one more son?

The room goes silent, eerily so, and Blaine has never given much thought to the band that is perpetually at the New Directions beck and call, but he feels exposed without them.

Being so utterly unmasked is somehow, strangely, freeing.

It’s like something he’s been holding back for too long has cracked open and he’s bleeding every word he sings. And it isn’t bitter, it is simply honest. It feels frustrated (you know, you know - no you don’t, you don’t) and sad (another head aches, another heart breaks) and scared (his voice cracks over the words I need direction to perfection).

He sings don’t you put me on the back-burner, to Sebastian’s face and lets himself be pulled into the music entirely. So lost in his own head, in the song itself, that he barely registers the people that surround him.

He knows, at some point, that they start to join in. But it’s not until he hears the voices soaring along with his as he sings, I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier, that he realizes that they have heard him.

He comes back to himself, breathing hard (and somewhat inexplicably standing on top of a table,) the words, if you can hold on, hold on dying in the air, to a sea of grinning faces who whoop and cheer in the wake of it all. Sebastian standing amidst them, clapping his hands slowly, an amused smile stretched wide across his lips.

“Welcome back, Blaine Anderson,” Sebastian says as his hands drop back to his side, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Blaine as he clambers down from the table. “I think we have our closing number for Regionals.”

And while it’s clear to him, later when Sebastian starts to catch him up on choreography with such single-minded focus that it makes Mr. Schue’s booty camp seem like child’s play in comparison, that the Warblers are nothing like the group he’d left behind, it is also becoming increasingly more clear to him that neither is he.

He is starting to realize that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

\--

“Again,” Sebastian commands from somewhere behind him, beyond the scope of Blaine’s peripheral vision.

Sebastian has been slowly circling the room as he runs Blaine through the steps he is supposed to be learning and Blaine is beginning to find that the constant movement, the not knowing quite where he is at any given moment, is even more unsettling than Sebastian’s most blatant leering.

Blaine runs through the steps again; carefully, precisely, certain he’s actually got them down this time and is consequently startled by the amused, much closer, “Again,” that follows their completion.

Truth be told, he’s tired. Sweat has already broken the hold on his hair and his t-shirt is plastered heavily to his back. He feels sticky and frustrated and he’s (somewhat bitterly) starting to wonder if Sebastian remembers how to say anything other than ‘again.’

Blaine knows he’s no Mike Chang (or even, it would seem, no Sebastian Smythe) but he also knows he is more than capable of picking up choreography, usually without much trouble at all. Not unless Sebastian is involved, that is.

Jeff had been the last of the other Warblers to leave and that had been almost half an hour ago, waving breezily on his way out the door, and it must be getting late by now. Every now and then the sound of the cleaners in the hall outside or rooms adjacent will break through the beat of the song that has been on repeat all afternoon. Blaine doesn’t even really know why he is still here, other than a pervasive need to get the steps down, to prove he is dedicated to the team (and, somewhat less honorably, to have Sebastian admit that he has succeeded.)

It’s probably a sign of how distracted he’s been by the task at hand that it has taken him until now to suspect that Sebastian may have an ulterior motive in keeping him behind.

“The movements need to be sharper,” Sebastian declares as he steps up behind Blaine, an arm reaching around so he can tap a finger lightly against the bone of his wrist as if in explanation. “You’re moving too fluidly. I need to be able to see the beats.”

Blaine waits for Sebastian to retreat and resume his slow stalking of the room, hesitant to even breathe, but he doesn’t move. Sebastian’s proximity makes the back of his neck prickle, the lazy dawdle of fingers circling the delicate bones of his wrist, mapping the path of veins down the back of his hand, electric.

“Sebastian.”

He intends it as a warning, but it comes out strangely choked.

Blaine feels the puff of laughter as a burst of warmth against the back of his neck, and there’s an unexpected tremor of his hand when those fingers drop to rest instead, featherlight against his hip.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping,” Sebastian replies with another burst of warmth against the back of Blaine’s neck, second hand settling loosely over Blaine’s other hip. “Why? Does it bother you?”

Blaine finds himself starting to shake his head, the heavy thump of his heart echoing in his ears as the song fades out and the track stutters back to the start. He can feel heat crawling up his neck, fueled by the gentle points of pressure as Sebastian curls his fingers, pressing the tips into the thin fabric of his t-shirt, ever so lightly coaxing him backwards. Closer.

The song starts again but it goes entirely unheeded, Blaine’s fingers curling and uncurling at his sides as he realizes he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. Not when one of Sebastian’s thumbs drags up beneath the hem of his shirt, tracing where the waistband of his sweatpants meets his skin with an errant curiosity that makes Blaine’s skin burn.

Blaine can feel the shift of Sebastian’s weight behind him, the steady, fractional closing of the gap between them. He still isn’t prepared for the sudden dry, press of lips at the base of his neck, right over the highest notch of his spine.

It’s barely there, enough to make him wonder for a moment if he’d imagined it, except for the way that Sebastian’s fingers tense, thumbs digging a little harder into his hips as they drag slowly back and forth, tracing the shape of bone beneath his skin. It’s strangely careful and restrained, so entirely unlike Sebastian that Blaine doesn’t know what to make of it.

It doesn’t really suit him.

“I’m not going to break,” Blaine breathes out, unable to keep the words from tripping off his tongue the moment he thinks them because there’s a strange, nervous energy fizzing in his stomach and trembling in his bones.

He doesn’t know why he says it, except for the fact that maybe he kind of does. He doesn’t know what he wants or even expects from Sebastian, there’s this angry buzzing in his ears now of just because your feelings are hurt and throwing yourself at the first person that cycles through his head sometimes when it’s quiet and he’s struggling through his Chemistry notes. An ugly part of him that tells him he just likes the attention.

That, he thinks, is probably reason enough to pull away from Sebastian right now.

The other part of him is tired of forever feeling like he’s the one being stepped on, being treated like he’s so broken or misused. It’s the part of him that wants to make whatever mistakes he can, because he can. To take his chances, for once in his life.

“You’re already broken,” Sebastian laughs against the back of his neck and Blaine pulls away, fingers slipping away from his hips as he whips around to glare up at him.

“You spend most of your time staring tragically into dead space, Killer. I haven’t witnessed so much teen angst since my cousin made me sit through an entire season of Dawson’s Creek.”

The frank, amused raise of Sebastian’s eyebrows when Blaine meets his eyes stings more than Blaine is willing to admit to.

His fingers drag furiously at a snarl of sweaty, half-gelled hair and he takes a step back again as he huffs out a frustrated, “Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?”

“Why won’t you talk about what they did to you?”

Blaine retreats another step under the direct stare, his arms curling around himself, fingers digging into his biceps as he looks away. He drags his bottom lip between his teeth, ignores the salty taste of sweat and the throb of his heart before he can bring himself to say, “Talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”

Sebastian crosses his own arms, the curve of his lip in the face of Blaine’s frustration infuriating as he replies, “Neither is pining away like some insipid tribute to those awful vampire movies.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath, Blaine’s fingers curling into themselves as he hesitates, but Sebastian doesn’t hold back, his eyes fixed and determined as he says, “What is it with you, Anderson? Do you enjoy letting people walk all over you? You were eating lunch with the Warblers again within a week of being back here. You had to have surgery because of me and you’re acting like you aren’t still angry. What does it take for you to actually stand up for yourself?”

Blaine trembles, staring back at him and starting to open his mouth, to protest that he has forgiven them (he hasn’t, not really, sometimes it’s all he can do not to scream with how angry he is) but it’s the shake of Sebastian’s head as he says, “If you act like a doormat people will treat you like one.”

“My brother,” Blaine spits back before he can contain himself, his arms slipping down to curl tight around his waist because he feels like he can’t even breathe in the face of it, because what does Sebastian Smythe know about his life. “He - he and my brother. Who actually does that? And they’re acting like I’m the one who has the problem, like-”

There’s a flicker of something unexpected on Sebastian’s face that Blaine just barely catches when he forces himself to look up as Sebastian lets out a strange, huff of laughter and mutters, “So Saint Hummel’s moral high ground really isn’t so high after all.”

Something about the way he says it makes Blaine pause, makes him discard how completely irreverent Sebastian seems to the scandalous details of the entire affair. His fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt as he asks, “What?”

“I was wondering why he handed that tape over so readily, he was probably feeling guilty,” Sebastian muses, seemingly to himself.  
Blaine stiffens, eyes narrowing as he closes the gap between them to ask, “What tape? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know,” Sebastian replies and this is the first time that Blaine has ever seen Sebastian look genuinely surprised as he lets out a startled laugh that sounds anything but amused. “He never told you, did he?”

Something awful and nervous is starting to build in Blaine’s chest and he’s almost certain that knowing what Sebastian is talking about isn’t going to help anything at all, but he can’t seem to stop himself from asking, “Didn’t tell me what?”

Sebastian almost looks apologetic, the shrug of his shoulders entirely out of place as he glances away and replies, “That girl from your old glee club had me on tape admitting to tampering with that slushie.”

Blaine stares blankly at him for a moment, uncomprehending and feeling, suddenly, entirely empty.

His voice feels strange, disconnected from the rest of him as he starts to say, “They had,” but trails off, blinking rapidly to ward off the daze that seems to have encompassed him.

He doesn’t know what to say.

Blaine knows he should be angry, that beneath the numbness a part of him probably already is (has been, for a long time now). He’s been angry since that night, since being rendered a victim, once again, and being completely unable to do anything about it.

He hates the feelings of powerlessness and frustration that have reemerged, never truly forgotten in the first place but now fed fat on this new injustice. Realizing now that people he’d begun to think of as friends had played a part in that feels like the greatest betrayal of all. That they had taken that decision and that power away from him; that Kurt, who was concerned and once said that he loved him, had knowingly taken that from him. Hadn’t even bothered to mention it, like it was his decision to make.

Like Blaine’s opinion didn’t matter at all.

He feels like he might be sick.

“Hummel said that you would settle scores at Regionals,” Sebastian continues, his voice sounding very far away as Blaine stares numbly, somewhere over Sebastian’s shoulder. “Are you -”

“No,” Blaine replies thickly, shaking his head rapidly to dispel the fog and trying to clear his throat. “I’m not - I should go.”

Sebastian’s eyeing him warily now, closing the gap between them with another step forward, the careful nonchalance he’s so good at faltering as he says, “I don’t think you should drive.”

It all feels so entirely backward and wrong that it’s Sebastian who is concerned, that Sebastian can be concerned when this is his fault in so many ways. But his hand is warm and big when it closes over Blaine’s shoulder, guiding him this way and that to gather their things before he shuts off the stereo in the corner and the room falls into silence.

They end up sitting in Sebastian’s over-priced, too nice car, staring out at the empty parking lot in silence until Blaine says, “You knew what happened with Kurt this whole time, didn’t you?”

Sebastian shifts in his seat, pretending to check his reflection in the rear view as he replies, “That public school of yours has a very active online rumor mill.”

Blaine nods, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully as he debates what to say to that, to the realization that Sebastian had known and refrained from fueling the curiosity of Dalton’s own busy rumor mill for reasons Blaine can’t fathom at all. He doesn’t understand how Sebastian can be such a complete asshole to him and simultaneously be the only person he never thought he could trust.

He opens his mouth to maybe say thank you or at least something, because as much as he’d never really wanted to know what he knows now, at least he does know. But Sebastian cuts him off, buckling his seatbelt and not looking at Blaine at all as he says, “I’ll take you home.”

\--

He is so preoccupied with his own thoughts, unable to think beyond the sudden numbing acceptance that is slowly starting to crawl through him, that he doesn’t hear his name being called as he climbs the stairs towards his room.

There is something so final about it all, like the part of him that has still been secretly hoping, buried deep beneath the betrayal and the anger; the part that had clung resolutely to the memory of Kurt saying I love you, has been ruthlessly torn out. It is brutal, in it’s finality.

This, more than anything, has changed him. It isn’t the cheating and it isn’t the betrayal; it isn’t even the Cooper of it all. It’s the realization that Kurt, who he had trusted above all others, hadn’t even respected him enough to let him make that choice that cauterizes the resilient part of him that still bled some misguided notion of love.  
Kurt who knows more than anyone about why he struggles with feelings of helplessness, who knows how badly he needs to have control over his life. Kurt who, he’s beginning to realize, he doesn’t really know at all.

He’s turning to close the door behind him, struggling beneath the sudden crushing emptiness that realization has left in it’s wake, when a hand shoots out to grab the door, pushing it determinedly back open and Cooper is forcing his way inside.

“You can’t keep doing this, Blaine,” Cooper insists, bracing one arm against the door to stop him from trying to close it again. "I just want to talk to you."

It’s not until now, with Cooper waiting for an answer, that he realizes just how tired he is of all of this. It feels like everyone wants something from him these days, and never is it anything he is actually able to give.

It’s easier to turn away, to slide his satchel over his shoulder and place it neatly on his chair, to ignore the glimpse he’d gotten of Kurt over Cooper’s shoulder, hanging back a few steps and just waiting.

He’s so tired.

“Why were you with that Sebastian kid?” Cooper persists, taking another step into Blaine’s room as Blaine rummages through his wardrobe for clothes that don’t smell like a locker-room.

Blaine closes his eyes, drags a hand over his face in frustration and drags a t-shirt out of his wardrobe, another pair of sweatpants. The only thing he has to say, as he turns back to face his brother is a quiet, “Stop.”

Cooper stares back at him, forehead furrowed like he honestly just doesn’t get it and that’s the problem, really. Cooper’s never really gotten it. He's always been far too preoccupied with his own life to try and understand what's going on in his baby brother's.

This sudden concern, this pretense at caring, is all such a joke.

“You’re my kid brother,” Cooper replies, like this is just another fight over toys or parts in a song, some stupid squabble to be forgotten about the next day. “I can’t just stop caring, Blaine. You’re hanging out with the guy who tried to blind you-”

“You don’t get to pick and choose when you want to be my brother, Cooper,” Blaine replies, rubbing a hand over his face and closing his eyes, taking a slow breath as he says, “Have you ever thought that maybe he’s the only real friend I’ve got left?”

“It’s Sebastian, Blaine,” Kurt cuts in, something hard and exasperated in his eyes. “How can you not see what he’s doing? He’s using you to try and beat us at Regionals. You of all people know what he’s capable of.”

If you act like a doormat, people will treat you like one.

The reaction is visceral, the numbness that has weighted his limbs lifting in the face of the sheer anger he’s feeling, his fingers clenching hard into the material in his hands as he snaps, “I would take Sebastian and every horrible thing he is capable of over what you did. At least he’s honest. At least he doesn’t think he can make decisions about my life for me.”

Kurt doesn’t understand. He can tell by the look on his face, the haughty set of his chin and the way he laughs, so condescendingly, like Blaine’s a child who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. “Honest? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“More honest than you, Kurt," Blaine replies immediately, ignoring the way Cooper shifts uncomfortably like he doesn’t know what he’s expected to do. “Did you even think about telling me about that tape, about asking me what I wanted to do with the evidence of my assault, or was it just one more way for Kurt Hummel to prove his moral superiority?”

Kurt tenses, his eyes narrowing and Cooper turns towards him, forehead furrowed in confusion before he turns back to Blaine, “What are you talking about?”

“They had evidence,” Blaine replies hollowly, “They had Sebastian on tape admitting that he tampered with that slushie and Kurt gave it right back to him. How can you even stand there and pretend you ever cared about me when you don't even respect me enough to let me make decisions about my life?"

Kurt stares back at him, open mouthed, before he says, "I was doing the right thing. Getting revenge wouldn't have fixed what happened to you Blaine."

“No,” Blaine replies, shaking his head furiously. “No, you were only thinking about how it effected you and what you wanted to do. As per usual.”

“That isn’t fair, Blaine,” Cooper tries to intervene, his voice strangely soft, but now that he’s started Blaine feels like he can’t stop.

"It wasn't your decision to make," he barrels on and he knows he’s getting louder, that this was bound to happen after so long trying to bury all of that hurt, "What if I'd lost my eye? What if I wanted to press charges? You didn't know, Kurt. It wasn't-"

Blaine forces himself to take a breath, running his tongue across his lips at the sensation of something warm running over his skin and being surprised at the taste of salt. Blaine has never been much of a crier and an intense wave of frustration hits him when he realizes that he's crying in front of them.

"You had no right," he says, after another deep breath, swiping furiously at his face with the back of his hand.

Cooper is moving closer, reaching out for him like he wants to put a hand on his shoulder or pull him in for a hug like he used to when he was a kid, before all of this mess, but then he starts speaking and Blaine recoils at the reminder, "Obviously Kurt didn't think this through, but don't you think you're being a little harsh? Kurt wasn't trying to hurt you."

"For once in your life this isn't about you, Cooper," Blaine replies shakily, the sudden reminder that even his own brother can’t be counted on anymore, that Kurt has taken everything from him now, not just his friends and his life, but his family as well, like a slap to the face. "You can keep telling yourself that you didn't do anything wrong but the truth is that you deserve each other. You're both just as selfish as each other."

Kurt stares at him in disbelief, his voice cracking with something so hurt that Blaine thinks he could feel guilty, but the way Cooper turns away from him at the sound of Kurt’s distress is all it takes to remind him why this is happening. "That isn't fair, Blaine - you know that - it's not like we wanted to hurt you-"

"If you didn’t want to hurt me you wouldn’t have tried so damn hard," Blaine replies, swiping angrily at the persistent tears on his face. "I think you should go."

Neither of them move and Blaine is tempted just to walk out, to leave them to it, but this time he refuses to be the one who backs down.

This time he is going to stand his ground.

When they finally leave and he snaps the door shut behind them he thinks he should feel triumphant; elated at finally saying the words that have been festering inside him for so long, only ever grunted out between jabs at a punching bag.

Instead he just feels empty.

\--

He spends the night staring at his ceiling, exhausted to the bone but unable to sleep as he slowly processes every last moment of his relationship with Kurt, hoping to find some tangible proof that it all hadn’t been some terrible joke that everyone in the universe had been in on except for him.

The fool who transferred school’s for a boy. Who lost all his friends and every last scrap of a support system he’d ever had because of it.  
The more he thinks about it, the less convinced he is.

He feigns sleep when his mother ducks her head in to call him down for dinner, grateful that even though she clearly knows he isn’t sleeping, she doesn’t try to force the issue. Blaine wonders if Kurt is still here, sitting in his place at the table and eating his dinner.

He’s so very tired, but he doesn’t sleep at all.

\--

When Blaine emerges from his house the next morning, bleary-eyed but determined, he finds Sebastian waiting for him. It takes a moment for the realization to sink in that his car is still sitting in the parking lot at Dalton as he walks slowly towards where Sebastian is lazing against the hood of his car, collar unbuttoned and his tie hanging loose around his neck, a tray of coffees balanced next to his elbow and eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.

“You look like you could use a ride,” Sebastian calls out when Blaine’s only a few feet away, pushing himself up off his elbows and watching over the rims of his sunglasses as Blaine approaches.

Blaine stalls, winding his fingers around the strap of his satchel as Sebastian tilts his head, the look on his face so supremely unconcerned that Blaine almost misses how he hesitates before he liberates one of the coffees from the tray and holds it out to Blaine in offering.

“I also thought you might need one of these,” Sebastian continues as Blaine accepts the cup, his fingers curling immediately into the warmth seeping through the paper.

“There’s another long rehearsal scheduled for this afternoon. If you’re up for it, that is, Anderson.”

A smile emerges, sudden and unexpected across his lips, as he replies, “Of course I am,” and takes a sip of his coffee, wrinkling his nose and blinking rapidly against how much stronger the taste is than his usual order.

He rolls his eyes when he finds that Sebastian is smirking at him.

“What?” Blaine grumbles, licking his lips free of the hint of coffee he can taste there and watching warily as Sebastian takes another step towards him, that same infuriating smirk still stuck to his lips

Sebastian doesn’t answer, instead he reaches out to curl one hand around the fingers that are clutching Blaine’s coffee cup, the other reaching up to slide thoughtfully over the knot of Blaine’s tie, just grazing the skin of his throat as his fingers curl around the knot, straightening it into place, before they smooth down the fabric to where it disappears into the lapels of Blaine’s blazer. “Your tie was crooked.”

His finger tips Blaine’s chin up pointedly before he retreats to free his own coffee from the tray and nonchalantly takes a long sip and Blaine suspects, from the curve of his lips, that Sebastian might be laughing at him, at least internally. He can’t be sure though, not with Sebastian sliding his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose and abruptly turning to stroll around the hood of his car, pausing only when he’s got the door open to ask, “Well, are you coming or not?”

Blaine thinks he sees movement at one of the windows in his house as he climbs into the passenger seat, but it’s forgotten the moment Sebastian pulls away from the curb.

\--

It gets easier after that.

The rehearsal schedule in the lead-up to Regionals eats huge chunks out of Blaine’s spare time and leaves him so exhausted that he has very little time to brood over the wreckage of his personal life.

It’s freeing, in a sense, that entire disconnect that he’s able to allow himself now. He isn’t biding his time or hoping for anything, that chapter of his life has been firmly put behind him, not to be revisited.

Sebastian asks him once, when they’re running through solidifying their final setlist for Regionals, if this is really going to be enough for him.

Blaine’s response is a shrug, just a hint of a smile.

Kurt had been the one to choose Regionals as the stage upon which to settle their scores and, in this arena at least, Blaine is willing to oblige him.

He’s always been better at singing his feelings anyway.

\--

They’re entering the final stretch of rehearsals before competition and half of the Warblers are so jacked up on caffeine that they can’t sit still, the other half shuffling between classes with all the energy of the undead. Blaine likes to think he’s straddling the line between both, but he’s pretty sure he more closely resembles the former.

He should be singing The Killers in his sleep by now, he certainly has every beat of ‘Glad You Came’ permanently imprinted in his psyche and the mash-up will haunt his nightmares for years to come, but something has been distracting him.

Over the past few days Sebastian’s been acting strangely.

He’s been secretive and entirely too pleased with himself and Blaine is starting to get suspicious. There is only a week left until competition and he doesn’t know what Sebastian’s up to, but he is starting to wonder if it requires a little attention.

It’s thus not the surprise as he thinks it should be that when he ventures into the Lima Bean for only the third time since returning to Dalton, looking for caffeine to rouse him out of the fuzzy morning haze and aching muscles, he finds Sebastian standing in front of a table looking entirely too pleased with himself while both Kurt andRachel are staring aghast at the contents of a manila envelope.

Sebastian’s smile is sharp and so viciously satisfied that it stops Blaine in his tracks; partly not willing to put himself through another confrontation with Kurt so early in the morning, partly with concern that whatever Sebastian has planned it isn’t going to be pleasant.

Not until Rachel spots him, that is.

“Did you know about this?” she demands, half rising to her feet, and he freezes at the sight of the agitated colour in her cheeks and the fury in her eyes. He can’t bring himself to look at Kurt, so entirely unprepared to deal with seeing him when he hasn’t even had his coffee.

Sebastian cranes his head around and freezes when he sees him, something like guilt crawling across his features for only a moment before it disappears, shuttered behind that same cocky smile. “Oh no, you can’t go pinning the credit for this on Blaine. I put a lot of time and effort into finding the perfect engagement gift for you Rachel.”

Blaine stares, dumbfounded at the back of Sebastian’s head for a moment as he slowly takes it all in, the glossy stack of bridal magazines on the table and Rachel’s almost manic state of horror, Kurt just staring at him with a pointed superiority that makes his blood boil.

The word engagement is ringing in his ears and there’s something painful squirming in his chest, hurt that Rachel hadn’t even bothered to tell him. That nobody had bothered to tell him.

“What did you do?” he finds himself asking softly, forcing himself to close the distance until he’s standing beside Sebastian, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“McKinley has the home court advantage this year,” Sebastian replies, though the excuse seems flimsy at best. “I suggested that Rachel may want to sit this one out-”  
“What did you do?” Blaine repeats, reaching for the folder that Kurt wordlessly offers him with only that same I told you so expression on his face.

He tugs the photo from inside the envelope, glimpses enough to get the gist of what has left Rachel so horrified and Kurt caught between the need to say I told you so and the apparent need to rip the envelope back out of his fingers, and turns towards Sebastian with a sudden sinking realization.

It’s clearly doctored, because Blaine knows for certain that isn’t what Kurt actually looks like and he doubts Finn could even stand in heels that tall, but the intentions behind it are fairly clear, even without the glimpse of writing he’d glimpsed across the back of the photo.

Not just satisfied with other people’s brothers.

He remembers Sebastian asking if this would be enough for him. Clearly, he hadn’t believed that it would be.

“We don’t need that,” Blaine insists suddenly, unsure of exactly what he’s saying until his fingers are curling around Sebastian’s elbow and he’s turned away from Kurt and Rachel to focus on Sebastian instead. “If we are going to win it’ll be because we worked for this, because we’re better, not because of blackmail or a free pass.”

The look on Sebastian’s face is bordering on disbelief, quickly covered by a hint of a sneer as he scoffs, “Of course we’re going to win. This is for-”

You.

The hesitation is hastily covered up, but there is no mistaking Sebastian’s meaning. He looks away from Blaine hurriedly, casting a dismissive look in Kurt and Rachel’s direction, like their continued presence is something he takes offense to, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

Something sticks in Blaine’s throat, his fingers curling into the sleeves of his blazer as he stares up at Sebastian.

“Come on,” Sebastian mutters, catching the sleeve of Blaine’s blazer in his fingers as he turns away from the table and adds, “We have classes and I can practically smell the failure and desperation wafting off of both of them. It might be contagious.”

“- Sebastian,” he starts to protest, trying to stop the smile that is trying to pull at his lips because this is awful, he thinks this is possibly the worst thing anyone has ever done on his behalf, but Sebastian’s grip is insistent and his face pointedly neutral and however misguided, Sebastian had done this for him.

He can hear Kurt saying something behind them but his attention is centered down to that one point, pulling at his arm and saying, “Come on, Anderson, I’ll buy you a real coffee on our way.”

Blaine is almost certain he hears Kurt’s voice calling out to them as he lets Sebastian half pull him out the door,

 

Regionals --> the Warblers win, Seblaine live happily ever after and Cooper breaks up with Kurt. Because I say so.


End file.
